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ASA: A Space Adventure – Remastered – Review

ASA: A Space Adventure – Remastered – Review

A mediocre Myst clone

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Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure
Release date: April 4, 2015

If you follow my reviews then you know that I like to expound on the theme, concept or culture which a game is trying to bring out. Hopefully I can give you, the reader, a feeling for the vision of the game designer and thus an appreciation of just what the game is all about. Unfortunately, I am at a loss concerning this game.  In a nutshell…

ASA – A Space Adventure is just a mediocre Myst clone.

I can find nothing special about it and while it is a classic point-and-click adventure game, there is nothing to particularly recommend it.

Pros
 

The animated sequences are very well done. But they hardly make the game.

The graphics are good, but not what you would call “eye candy.”

Sound and voice acting are good, but not outstanding.

Cons
 

The storyline just isn’t that interesting. You find an alien artifact and it somehow transports you to a mysterious spaceship, but nothing terribly interesting happens. I had a hard time caring about what was going on.

The navigation is problematic. Landmarks are disjointed and it’s difficult to keep track of just where you are and how you are oriented. I had difficulty finding locations, leaving them and then trying to get back to them. Also, from scene-to-scene, you don’t know whether you’ll just click to move or scroll in a panorama. Small arrows in the scene give you a hint, but sometimes they are active hotspots and sometimes not. So each scene must be analyzed to figure out how to move within it. This made immersion impossible.

The puzzles are difficult and not in a good way. Layers of complexity are added just to make things complicated, but they have no meaning in the game. The previous occupant of the spaceship was a French astronaut from the year 2011. He’s left notes to help the next explorer figure out how to use the alien equipment, but his clues are so cryptic that they are just as difficult as the original problem. For example, rather than just translate the alien numbering system for you, he decided to invent his own system which can only count up to five. So now you have two numbering systems to translate. And it gets worse from there. The result is that I found myself feeling relief when a puzzle was solved, not satisfaction.

Clues are hidden all over the place and marked with a small pulsating dot, but they’re difficult to see and you find yourself playing hunt-the-pixel. Again, this destroys any immersion.

Conclusion
 

The bottom line is that this is a point-and-click adventure and we should be glad that they’re still being made.  But this is not one of the better ones. My final grade is C+ which means that it is playable, but not quite of professional quality – a passing grade.

 

Grade: C+
Very good animated scenes
 
– Problematic navigation
– Puzzles unnecessarily difficult
– Uninspired story line
 Logo

 
If you enjoy games like this, then you might like to:
 

Play – The White Chamber (See my review. I assume you have already played Myst.)
Read – Rama by Arthur C. Clark
Watch – Solarus, Russian movie with English subtitles. Also available as

System Requirements
 

MINIMUM PC:
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8
Processor: Dual Core @ 1.8Ghz+ (approx)
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Non-Dedicated (shared) video card with at least 512MB Shared VRAM & openGL 2.0 support
Hard Drive: 1 GB available space
Sound Card: openAL compatible sound card
Additional Notes: Mouse

 

MINIMUM Mac:
OS: Mac OS X 10.7+ (Lion)
Processor: 2 GHz (Dual Core) Intel
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB RAM
Hard Drive: 1 GB available space
Additional Notes: Mouse
 

Bob Washburne

Bob Washburne

I have been playing adventure games since 1979 when I played "Adventure" on the DEC PDP minicomputer at work. The first adventure game I ever purchased was "Zork 1" for CP/M. I can remember the introduction of the IBM PC. I remember the invention of the microcomputer (actually, it was discovered rather than invented). I remember the invention of the minicomputer. Yes, I am an old fart. I have written 80 reviews and articles for JustAdventure starting with my review of "Bioscopia" in February of 2004. I currently own more adventure games than I will ever be able to play, let alone review. And I want more!

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